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FAO: Drug Users | MESSAGE: Please boycott foreign drugs or overdose already. Thanks! (pg. 12)
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| EddieZilker |
| quote: | Originally posted by srussell0018
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Hint: Re-read the post and pay attention to the portion at the bottom which kind of proves the point you were trying to make...
Kind of... :tongue3 |
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| srussell0018 |
I think you're not understanding me. I'm not mad, and I'm not saying you're wrong. I'm just saying that sometimes your arguments are too long-winded for your own good, and that just because you say someone is using a logical fallacy, doesn't mean they are.
I know you impress lots of people on this forum with your language, but once that's stripped away, there's not always much left.
I quite enjoy a lot of your posts, including some of the information in this one, it's just the way you argue sometimes is a bit tiresome. When you argue so condescendingly, saying things like, "I think what you were 'trying' to argue is," it just comes off like you're trying to win an intelligence contest (which is funny since you actually bragged about an IQ test you took 17 years ago), than an actual constructive argument.
I apologize if my posts seemed angry towards you or hostile in any way, I'm really not trying to argue anything about mass-murderers other than there's no way to study the minds of mass-murderers the moment before they kill themselves if they're already dead :p |
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| srussell0018 |
Basically, when I read your posts, I think of this guy
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| EddieZilker |
| quote: | Originally posted by srussell0018
Basically, when I read your posts, I think of this guy
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I need a haircut and minus some years and a little gray, that's kind of what I look like, beard and all, but with glasses.
It's not condescension and I'm not bragging but I was using that (the IQ test bit) as an anecdote to prove I'm not arguing for the sake of arguing. I probably could have done better than that (the anecdote and the IQ test ;) ) and I completely understand why such conclusions are drawn but if I was truly being condescending, I would use much simpler terms, followed with citation to prove my point. The "Grandiloquent Allocutor" user-title is actually me self-deprecating in this regard and you're in good company (Mr. JBJ among others) who've noted my overtly elaborate use of language. It's definitely not because you (or anyone else, for that matter) are some intellectual slouch who is easy to knock off his feet, that we're having this conversation; that would then provide me with some sadistic gratification for having done so. I don't write this way to impress anyone - some of the I send off in Private Message is just as ridiculously wordy.
While I have genuinely tried to simplify my use of language, more-so lately, and now usually try to be more succinct, I sometimes feel compelled to give the full extent of my thinking so as not to be misunderstood. In short, I'm not trying to be condescending...
It's just a speech impediment. |
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| Fledz |
| You're spending too much time around that M4B, that's why :p |
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| Lira |
Sorry, Russell, had to be away for a while. I hope you can be arsed to keep debating this issue :p
| quote: | Originally posted by srussell0018
My opinion is irrelevant. Since morality is subjective, I think that what makes a thing right is whatever a person deems right. Getting into words like "right" and "wrong" I think necessitates a subjective answer when talking about morals. |
I don't see how that can be a problem because of the following:
| quote: | Originally posted by srussell0018
Not necessarily. I'm saying your system of morality is just that, yours. I'm saying there is no system of morality for "us." |
All right, I can give you that, but it isn't a problem because subjective systems can be shared and agreed upon.
There's nothing objective whatsoever about language: It's a intersubjective system of signs not unlike morality, because it needs at least two people in order to work (if you lived alone, morality and language would be pointless). Nothing, absolutely nothing, in the world says the word "bird" stands for Sushipunk's flying friends. As a matter of fact, where I live the word is "pássaro", and it sounds nothing like "bird". So, does it mean that, if we both meet, we can't pick a common word? And, if we've got different systems of morality, can't we pick a common system and follow that one?
| quote: | Originally posted by srussell0018
I don't think so. Just because there's no universal standard for morality, doesn't mean that morality doesn't exist. |
And that's my point.
| quote: | Originally posted by srussell0018
Why do you reckon it's immoral then? Psychopathy kind of affects your examples in this case, so I'd have to say it's a possibility that the Columbine shooters either A) had no morality or B) weren't capable of grasping it at the time.
I guess in my opinion, and in using your example; for myself, no, I wouldn't go on a killing spree like that myself, but if someone were to ask me if it was objectively morally wrong to do so, my answer would be "no." However misguided the reasoning is for doing whatever "wrong" act, there is a possibility that to that individual, the act they're performing is wholly "right." |
It's immoral to me because I reckon that sort of behaviour is undesirable - and I'm not alone in this, surprisingly enough. Those around me probably share the same opinion (unless everybody thinks it's cool to kill people and no one told me) and, more tellingly, I'm willing to bet people where you live probably frown upon this sort of behaviour. It does seem to be a universal and this is good news if you want to refrain from adopting a nihilist stance in morality: if there are (even if just near-)universals we can agree upon, then there's some material we can work on. For example:
These guys found desirable traits admired in most cultures they investigated. Sure, it'd be too naïve to say these are the "moral universals" we're looking for but it's a hint that due to our common genetic make-up and similar environments, it's unlikely that two peoples (or two persons for that matter) will come to have opposite moralities - unless one of the persons really deviates from the norm.
And that brings us back to Columbine. They didn't open fire because they felt like it. Both kids had been bullied for months, and one became depressive and the other became a psychopath [source in a popular news site] - and that's hardly surprising. So they had a system of morality not much different from ours probably, and they sought to right a wrong. The difference between us and the trouble high school shooters is that we don't go to such extremes in order to make ourselves heard. The "immorality" here came not from a difference of kind (it is moral to correct a wrong) but from a difference of degree (it's not moral to correct a wrong in such a way that the author of the immoral behaviour you seek to rectify won't have a chance to do it right). Though, of course, our tolerance regarding the immorality of this violent correction differs from time to time and from place to place: If you're a high school student, you can't kill bullets, but if you're the US government, you can kill criminals. And, if you're the Brazilian government, you can't.
In any case, it's not a disagreement we can't work on. So, just like English became a lingua franca, there's no reason to believe a subjective system of morality can't be adopted by all peoples when dealing with one another even if we behave differently among ourselves.
| quote: | Originally posted by Comrade Stalin
Government can't stifle a market this huge and doing so would be the reason why there is so much violence. Don't blame the market itself. Cigarette and alcohol companies aren't knocking each other off because one of their sales associates treaded on the other's territory. Prohibition is the obvious problem, not the fact that people want to smoke weed. |
I'm not "blaming" the market insofar as the market works in accordance with the law. If this isn't the case, users ought to do what they can to repel the law and then play by the rules. |
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| Halcyon+On+On |
| quote: | Originally posted by Lira
So, just like English became a lingua franca, there's no reason to believe a subjective system of morality can't be adopted by all peoples when dealing with one another even if we behave differently among ourselves. |
Apart from the basic social contract, Religion has been the most effective tool at uniting people under any single, moral system. Needless to say, things have gone swimmingly!
People who do drugs are not guilty any more than the poor farmers enslaved into collecting coca beans. Sure, your sense of sympathy may waver between the two, but to blame an entire party because of the result is to undermine the individual choices - the very morality you might suppose to be subjective - of every hired gun, every thug, every kidnapper who commits things you -individually - morally object to. |
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| Lira |
| quote: | Originally posted by Halcyon+On+On
Apart from the basic social contract, Religion has been the most effective tool at uniting people under any single, moral system. Needless to say, things have gone swimmingly! |
That's why, regarding languages, I said English was an example, not Esperanto ;) |
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| Halcyon+On+On |
Yes, it was very astute wording for a very flawed ideal.
To expect any morality out of people, or a person, is an awfully tall demand of mutual trust inclusive of nothing more enforceable than social consequence. Sure, there is always physical internment for 'crimes' which might be considered too heinous to tolerate in any 'moral' society - or even execution or torture as consequence - but these are necessities for tribal cohesion on most any scale, are they inherent tenets to morality as we might know it? To kill murderers?
To suppose morality as subjective in the first place - which it is, be the supposition 'right', 'wrong' or indifferent - we must recognize that immorality is an absolute comparative to the subjective notion of consequential experience via negativa. Now what is your subjective definition of immorality? Since the term morality is going to vary in interpretation, are there things people can agree upon that are absolutely devoid of any alignment, any consequence, any semblance of cohesion? Or in the flux of our considerations, have we left the window wide open to the germ of ambivalence? |
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| Lira |
| quote: | Originally posted by Halcyon+On+On
Yes, it was very astute wording for a very flawed ideal.
To expect any morality out of people, or a person, is an awfully tall demand of mutual trust inclusive of nothing more enforceable than social consequence. Sure, there is always physical internment for 'crimes' which might be considered too heinous to tolerate in any 'moral' society - or even execution or torture as consequence - but these are necessities for tribal cohesion on most any scale, are they inherent tenets to morality as we might know it? To kill murderers? |
Not really.
| quote: | Originally posted by Halcyon+On+On
To suppose morality as subjective in the first place - which it is, be the supposition 'right', 'wrong' or indifferent - we must recognize that immorality is an absolute comparative to the subjective notion of consequential experience via negativa. Now what is your subjective definition of immorality? |
Morality defines what's moral, immorality defines what's left (i.e. immoral).
| quote: | Originally posted by Halcyon+On+On
Since the term morality is going to vary in interpretation, are there things people can agree upon that are absolutely devoid of any alignment, any consequence, any semblance of cohesion? |
No.
| quote: | Originally posted by Halcyon+On+On
Or in the flux of our considerations, have we left the window wide open to the germ of ambivalence? |
Pretty much, yes.
I'm arguing for something a lot simpler and more modest than what you probably have in mind. |
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| Halcyon+On+On |
| Ah yes, it's so very simple. Kill yourself if you contribute to criminal trafficking in any way. Perhaps you should simply kill yourself so you don't have to witness all the horrors of the world? |
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